Religion: Rome & the Future

Almost fully recovered from his long bout of winter illness, Pope Pius
XII was back last week at his hard-working routine. He was up in the
morning at 6:30, and often the light in his study above St. Peter's
Square was burning at midnight. Yet Eugenio Pacelli, still as slim and
erect as a brigadier in the 15th year of his reign, is also in the 78th
year of his life, and so, among Rome's churchmen, the talk is of his
successor.

In a church which has elected Italians to the papacy for four centuries,...